


When Children Pass Away

by AllesKlara



Category: Celtic Mythology, German Mythology, Greek and Roman Mythology, Original Work
Genre: Dogs, Gen, Goddesses, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Mythology - Freeform, The Netherlands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllesKlara/pseuds/AllesKlara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the children of the gods must go their own ways.</p><p>Written for <a href="http://pinkpolarity.livejournal.com/">pinkpolarity</a>, in response to an auction at <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/">help_haiti</a>.  For more on what little is known about Nehalennia, check out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalennia">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="http://www.livius.org/ne-nn/nehalennia/nehalennia.html">Livius</a>, and other articles on the web. My historical and geographical knowledge of her time and area are spotty, at best; I've played very fast and loose with both history and cultures.</p><p>Warning for non-canonical gender in this story—Charon is female.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Children Pass Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pinkpolarity](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Pinkpolarity).



The pup, gray and slender and whip-quick, lacking the two extra heads of her mother, looked, Cerberus told Charon, like her father—a fine sighthound belonging to King Eurystheus, met and mated with in a moment's quick passion in the world of the living.

Charon nodded and thought of her own daughter's father—an explorer, drowned in a sea crossing, newly brought into the Roman religion before his death and still unsure of its gods and customs. He hadn't known enough to fear her. He had asked her questions and listened carefully and kissed her, to stop her leading him onto the boat, to prove to himself and to her that he couldn't possibly be dead.

She had let him kiss her, and more, and then she had ferried him across the Styx into the underworld, like any other soul.

Her daughter's hair was dark brown, not black, and she had color to her, as though she had not lived all of her life in the underworld. She smelled of water, but not of the cold deep still water of the Styx. She smelled of the sea, the scent of her father.

The pup and the girl grew up together, nameless, because they were something like gods, and gods' names are left to mortals. The pup learned to guard the gate of Hades, to stare coldly at the newly dead and raise the fur on her ruff and make low sounds in her throat like rocks settling against each other. She learned to seem as implacable as death itself, ever-present and watching. For all her narrow, fine-boned hunting body, she learned to frighten and to command respect.

The girl never learned her own mother's work so well as the pup did hers. She listened to the dead and asked them about their lives and took her time ferrying them over the Styx. Some of the dead, those new to the religion of Rome, told the girl stories, in a language that was Latin, but Latin accented heavy and strange, about a sea that many died in crossing—that they had died in crossing. It was a godless sea, they said, a place where you could call out and offer your soul and your service and your life and receive no help from any god of Rome.

After years of the Styx and the dead and the underworld, the girl became a woman, and she ran away. The dog came with her, because the dog had learned to be most implacable and ever-present when it came to her friend.

The woman and the dog found the sea that the dead spoke of; and, soon after, the sailors that braved it to trade with Rome began to have their prayers answered. The captain would see a dog in the waves, gray as the low sky above and the tearing water below; and he would turn, at a touch on the shoulder, to glimpse for one instant a woman, robe undisturbed by the wind but dark hair blown wild by it—and that was all. But afterwards the ship and all aboard would come safe through the storm.

The sailors gave the woman a name, in their language, which was not the Latin of Rome. They called her Nehalennia, and the dog became Markuon, and when Charon and Cerberus came, years later, to bring their daughters back home, Nehalennia and Markuon showed them the engraved stones that the sailors offered to them and the temple that had been built for them, and they refused to return.

Charon and Cerberus argued with their daughters. They told them the living world changed quickly, and that, though the Styx and the underworld would endure, this one sea passage and this one small people who left stones engraved in Latin but who spoke and named in a different tongue might soon pass away. The pantheon of Rome would last, but the beliefs of these people would fade, and Nehalennia and Markuon (and the names, which were not of Rome or Greece, did not come easily to the mothers' tongues) might well fade with them. They told their daughters to come back—to stay with them and be safe.

But the daughters said no and stayed in the world of the living, and their mothers let them stay. They were worshipped and grew closer and closer to each other and to the sea and the shore and to the people that they had chosen.

Until, one day, a flood rushed down the river into their sea and tore away their temple and the stones that had been offered to them, and the people, homes and lives devastated, did not replace them. They moved on and away, leaving Nehalennia and Markuon behind.

As the woman and the dog were quiet together, making a decision in silence by their sea, Charon and Cerberus came and asked their daughters if they would come home, now. They told them to come back and be sure of themselves and of their place in the universe and of what they presided over. Come back and be part of death and of Rome-that-will-endure.

But again the daughters said no. They said they had become gods of passages, as their mothers were gods of one passage. They would go with the people who had become theirs. They would help them through whatever passages they might face.

So they went, a dark-haired woman and a sky-gray dog, and Charon and Cerberus watched them go, and grieved.


End file.
